Kapustin Piano Music/title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#CCCCCC"> <table width="86%" border="1"> <tr> <td><p align="center"><img src="7149.jpg" width="178" height="178"></p> <p><strong>KAPUSTIN: 24 Preludes in Jazz Style, Op. 53. <em>Dawn</em> (1983). Toccatina (1982). <em>Meditation</em> (1987). <em>Sound of Big Band </em>(1986). <em>Moving Force</em> (1985).<br> Nikolai Kapustin (piano).<br> Music Boheme CDBRM007149 TT: 59:08.<a href="http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1302743-10274126?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.arkivmusic.com%2Fclassical%2Falbum.jsp%3Falbum_id%3D509309&cjsku=501036" target="_blank" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.arkivmusic.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status=' ';return true;"><br> BUY NOW FROM ARKIVMUSIC</a><img src="http://www.awltovhc.com/image-1302743-10274126" width="1" height="1" border="0"/> </strong> </p> <p><br> Nikolai Kapustin, born in Ukraine in 1937, studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory under Aleksandr Goldenweiser, who also taught Lazar Berman and Tatyana Nikolayeva. To support himself, he played in Soviet jazz clubs. The Russians loved jazz but didn't know a lot of the real thing, and so they developed their own jazz traditions. Kapustin knew more than most. Early on, he hooked onto Ellington and, somehow, Gunther Schuller's so-called Third Stream. The idea of fusing somehow jazz and classical music fascinated him.<br> <br> Many writers consider him a "light" composer, but I think they do so out of an habitual disregard for jazz, rather than for his music's quality -- at least, to judge by the music here. This isn't jazz so much as it is classical music in jazz idioms. Of course, no work on this album runs long enough to play around with classical form, although Kapustin has written large-scale pieces, including three piano concerti. You notice right away in the very first prelude the music's complexity. It's a fanfare, it's a roar, it's a torrent of notes. I hear echoes of Bartók and even Vaughan Williams (the piano concerto), as well as Bud Powell, Errol Garner, Ellington, and Bill Evans, with a sprinkle of Art Tatum sometimes for leavening. The whole set of preludes amazes me in its variety. Aaron Copland once proclaimed that jazz limited a composer to either the blues or "snappy" numbers. His own flirtation with jazz actually proves him wrong. Kapustin disproves him in spades. Each of these little preludes takes on a different jazz style or gambit, not counting the figures that Kapustin so liberally invents. Each individual piece works all by itself and as part of the larger set. You don't feel that anything repeats, but that one thing leads inevitably to the next. It's just this sort of thing that may make a masterpiece.<br> <br> The fugitive works, with the exceptions of <em>Meditation </em>and <em>Moving Force</em>, aim more toward pop than to either classical or jazz. They really are superior light music. I especially admired <em>Sound of Big Band</em>. <em>Meditation</em>, the longest single track on the disc, requires a pianist with a subtler sense of line than Kapustin demonstrates. It strikes me as a work of various lights and shades. Kapustin the pianist lets down the composer with a mostly monochromatic, brute-force reading. <em>Moving Force</em>, another toccata, suits the pianist better.<br> <br> On the other hand, Kapustin as a pianist swings only fitfully, or I should say he swings enough. The music comes down more on the side of classical than jazz. However, to achieve a real jazz feeling, he has to overcome a certain rigidity of touch and rhythm, and he often does.<br> <br> The piano is well-recorded. I'd love to hear some of the bigger pieces by this composer.</p> <p><br> <font size="+2"> <strong>S.G.S</strong></font>. (April 2011)</p></td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>